Pat Baskett considers what it feels like for young people to face turning their lives around to save the planet from environmental collapse

If I were 14 instead of 74 I would be pretty depressed after last week. Another 220sq km of good food-producing land in Taranaki is to be potentially wrecked so that we can continue to drive, fly and live the way we always have.

My 14-year-old’s eyes would have been caught by the title of the conference, the Just Transition Summit, at which these new permits for oil and gas exploration were announced. She understands that we need to go through a transition period but her impatience for this to start is obvious. New permits – on land as opposed to the ban on new ocean permits – seem like a step backwards.

She also understands the positioning of the word “just” because she understands that climate change is linked to the rise of inequality and economic injustice.

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Ten years, the most likely time we have to turn our lives around, seems a mere blink to me. For teens, it stretches ahead like an open road leading they know not quite where.